news
Newsstand: March 15, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
It’s the dawn of a new Tuesday, and it sure is a pink one. In the news: City Hall expense reports out, race to find the most irrelevant charges begins; no afros or freedom allowed at Queen’s Park; and Toronto Hydro gives some handy tips on how to avoid random electrocution.
It’s that time of the fiscal year again: quarterly expense report time down at City Hall. Details of City councillors’ office budgets were published Monday, and the Sun has spun the release into at least four stories. Among the jokes Sun reporter Don Peat beat us to: “Anyone order their steak pinko?”, in which he tells the story of some lady councillors’ decision to expense a steak lunch the day after Don Cherry’s rousing investiture speech. Other odd office expenses dutifully highlighted by Peat for posterity include Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels for a holiday toy drive, office renovation costs, an iPhone 4, and Adam Giambrone’s trip to Italy for a “conference.” Two words: bunga bunga.
Queen’s Park will be an afro- and freedom-free zone this May, as the City has denied event permits to two popular annual festivals. Going on its twenty-third year, Afrofest is one of the largest annual African music festivals of its kind. Festival organizers had already begun to book musicians and vendors for the event alternately known as “the African festival at Queen’s Park”, but now they’ll have to find a new venue. Their permit was refused due to noise and parking violations, general messiness, and unapproved use of fun things like a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel last time around. Open alcohol and open pot use at the Freedom Festival, an annual marijuana legalization event at Queen’s Park, are being cited by City staff as the reason for its permit denial. Next up, City officials will be forced to ban any public gathering of more than twenty people for the same reasons.
Speaking to a meeting of CUPE leaders on Monday, a Wisconsin labour leader let out a resounding rally cry to her brothers and sisters in Toronto unions: don’t ever let [insert your guy’s name here] bully you around! After confirming the particulars, Stephanie Bloomingdale went on to say that the Rt. Hon. Rob guy’s plan to privatize some garbage collection was just the first step in a plan to weaken and demoralize the unions, and she urged CUPE respond aggressively because “what’s his name” is starting to sound a lot like “you know who.”
Remember having multiple multi-week vacations in a year? Yeah, we can barely believe that was a thing either. Well apparently not satisfied with their March Break smuggery and glow, school boards are already talking about how to make all that time off at Christmas even more awesome. Well actually, they’re just talking about pushing winter holidays back so they don’t begin until December 23, when most working parents start to take their vacay. Enjoy it while it lasts, kiddos. Because soon you’ll have a job that you’ll have to wake up for almost every single day for the rest of your lives, and despite what your tenth grade Careers teacher says, you’re probably going to hate it most of the time.
And remember guys, try not to get electrocuted on the street today. Toronto Hydro is advising pedestrians to stay closer to storefronts than streetlights and to use non-conductive materials for their pet’s leash. Just in case.